


the anatomy of

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Just Add Kittens, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 05:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3162836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren Yeager has a somewhat troublesome affinity with animals. Levi attempts to deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the anatomy of

**Author's Note:**

> This written for Ereri Secret Santa, but to be quite honest I personally read this fic as leaning a little more towards platonic/get-to-know-you than preslash, but YMMV. But the idea of Eren getting along well with animals is irresistible to me. The prompt originally asked for Eren and Levi in a pet shop so this was definitely a roundabout way of filling it.

They’re allowed to hunt for game in the woods surrounding headquarters because funding doesn’t grow on trees, and supply lines for a military division as unpopular as the Scouting Legion are complete shit, nonexistent at worst, unreliable at best. Even so, soldiers who enter the Scouting Legion expect to die messily by titan, certainly not by wolf.

It’s big and powerful, eyes gleaming in the shadow of the trees, its steps surprisingly light, barely stirring the brush underfoot. The doe it had been tracking lies bloodied and still, its body sprawled over an intricate web of mossy tree roots, a bullet buried in its neck.

Petra was the one to make the shot; their hunting paths must have overlapped with the wolf’s. Levi shifts warily, muscles tensing as he tightens his grip on his rifle, unwilling to redirect his sights. Neither Petra nor Erd make a move, not exactly keen on drawing attention to themselves or agitating the wolf. In a situation like this, there isn’t exactly any set protocol for them to follow, especially with circumstances so rare.

Eren on the other hand, is still moving.

“What the fuck are you doing,” Levi growls. Ordinarily they wouldn’t have taken Eren into the woods with them, him being a titan shifter under probation and all, but this is a sanctioned outing that is supposed be part of the ongoing evaluation of his trainee skillset. Evidently, the brat hadn’t learned much of anything, because he’s putting his rifle down.

“Easy,” is all Eren says, but Levi realizes incredulously that the damned shithead isn’t even talking to him, he’s talking to the wolf. Glancing at the rest of their hunting squad from the corner of his eye, Levi can see Petra’s anxious and panicked expression, and the trademark grimace Erd gets on his face whenever he thinks someone is doing something spectacularly stupid. And Levi agrees, the brat is being spectacularly stupid, even has the gall to give him this little smile and reassuring look as if he actually knows what the fuck he’s doing. Ridiculous.

“Easy there,” the kid says again, and his voice drops, pitches into this low rumble that’s impossibly smooth and almost hypnotic. He doesn’t get up again either, instead, he puts his palms to grass and damp earth and starts crawling. The wolf growls a little, shifting restlessly on its paws, but it doesn’t seem to pay the rest of them any mind, not Petra’s hiss of alarm, not the shiny metal barrel Levi has trained on its head. Eren makes this noise like he’s shushing it, the same kind of murmuring whisper Levi’s seen some Scouts use to settle their babies, when their families are fortunate enough to visit them on base.

“We won’t hurt you,” Eren says, steady and slow and syrupy, almost kind and endlessly gentle. “You’re alright.” And he’s getting closer, crouched low to the ground and creeping, inch by inch, towards the wolf. He gets a single wag of its tail in response and an answering rumble from deep within its throat.

“Amazing,” the titan brat breathes, and he reaches out—

"Jaeger,” Levi says, voice low, “ _Eren_ —“

—He slides his fingers into the thick ruff of the wolf’s fur, and it looks like the wolf nuzzles into his palm, as if greeting an old friend—

Levi kicks back the loading mechanism with a loud, metallic click and the spell is broken, a bushy tail flickering out of view among the bushes.

“Get the deer,” Levi spits venomously in the ensuing silence, lowering his rifle and turning back towards headquarters. Eren scrambles to it, looking at him apologetically, with solemn eyes. But he doesn’t apologize, and when they gut and skin the deer as a group later, his hands are steady.

“I used to see wolves in the forests all the time, when I went there with my Dad,” he says awkwardly, hands gloved to the elbows and filled with looping ropes of intestine to be put into the mess bucket beside him. “They aren’t so bad.”

It doesn’t explain a single fucking thing. He’s like a damn animal whisperer, or something. Nothing explains why dogs in the street love him on sight, nothing explains why the butterflies flutter about his head in a halo like a scene straight out of a bloody fairytale, nothing explains why the horses, when let loose in the pen for a free range run, like to nudge and bump and sidle by him, chew idly at his hair or bite at his uniform jacket for attention, sniff at his empty hands for treats or drape their heads over his shoulders. And Levi’s seen Eren on stable duty. His own mount, a hardy black mare known for her prickliness, lipped after him when he walked by her stall, whickering softly so that he would pause for a moment and give her a couple soothing pats to the nose, a few strokes to her neck and mane.

“What the hell, was yours an equestrian family?” Levi asks one day.

“No?” Eren says, in response to Levi’s question. He’s almost comical in the way he scrunches his forehead up with so much concentration, his hand shifting around the handle of the broom in thought. “I mean, we had horses, for Dad’s cart…but Sasha and Connie probably know their way around a horse a lot better than I do.”

Eren quails a little under Levi’s flat stare; how the hell is Levi supposed to know who the fuck Sasha and Connie are? They’re likely the new recruits from Eren’s trainee squad, but the Scouting Legion hasn’t gotten such choice pickings from the top ten in so long, how the shitting hell is Levi supposed to tell these stupid brats apart from each other? All he knows is that there are too many of them, loud and clumsy and really fucking dirty. He’s always apprehensive about opening the broom closets now. Horny bastards.

“What’s with your shirt,” Levi says instead, abruptly.

“What do you mean?” the little menace asks, blinking his big-ass peepers. Fuck. Maybe that’s why he gets along with animals so well, him and his stupid doe eyes. Levi’s never seen such big eyes on anyone, not even the girls who lurked in the alleys of the Underground who lured men to them, emerging three seconds later with blood carefully washed from their palms and a fat wad of cash stashed carefully against the skin of their bosoms.

“Your shirt,” Levi says again impatiently, taps the hollow of Eren’s throat. The cord that holds together the collar of one of Eren’s neverending stash of yellow shirts is missing. With the shirt’s widespread neck, it’s normal to see the edge of Eren’s collarbone against the folds of the uniform jacket, but with the collar spread open like this, it’s a little unsettling. It emphasizes the ridge, the angle of the clavicle, the shadowed little dip in between the bone that merges into the line of his throat. The expanse of tan skin at the top of Eren’s chest, stark against fluttering edges of yellow fabric. Levi abruptly thinks of the public showers and how Eren is thin, even despite the muscle built from training.

“He’ll grow into it,” Hanji told him on another one of their mutual insomniac’s trips, cradling a cup of watered down coffee. If they hadn’t fallen asleep yet, it wasn’t likely that they would. “He’s still growing.”

But there are things about Eren that seem weathered sometimes, worn thin and vulnerable—and without that black cord, that quiet binding, Eren looks young, open and exposed, throat bared to anyone who would choose to rip it out. Front and back, front to take out the human, the back to take out the titan. Doe eyes.

“There was a cat,” Eren says.

“A cat.”

“Yes, I went downstairs yesterday and there was a cat, a gray one—“

“A stray?” Levi growls, thinking of fleas and fungal infections.

Eren shakes his head. “I don’t think so, its fur was clean and it wasn’t skinny at all, so I think someone’s taking care of it.”

“So what does your shirt have to do with this cat?”

Eren’s brow scrunches again. He’s obviously getting a little annoyed about Levi’s constant interruptions and it’s funny how utterly transparent he is. “I…wanted to see if it would come back again,” he says, and the words are a little slow and halting. “So I….”

“So you put a collar on it?” Levi asks, eyebrow rising in disdain. “No,” Eren says, shaking his head vehemently. “A marker. I asked if it was okay.”

“You asked? It’s a cat,” Levi says flatly.

“Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t collar a cat,” Eren says, eyes flashing and mouth edging into a frown. “Which is why you shouldn’t collar one at all.”

The quirk of Levi’s mouth is quick, the bolt of satisfaction in his chest even quicker. “Not bad,” he says, before turning to walk away. Cats and wolves and horses. What a mess. In a place as cold as the basement, Eren shouldn’t have been able to find a cat at all.

It’s a little galling to find that Eren’s proficiency with animals seems to extend to humans, too. Bedridden and marinating in his own sweat, Levi is struck down by fever and flu within a span of two quick days, going from an irritable throat to a woozy collapse in the mess hall late at night. Eren checks in every chance he gets.

“He’s a doctor’s kid,” Hanji tells him not unkindly, with a tone of almost put upon tolerance. He hates that tone; it’s convenient to think of Hanji as some sort of mad scientist, but the truth is that they’re very smart and very shrewd and stick their nose into everything and anything. It’s annoying to think of how much smarter they are than Levi, and how much easier it is for them read his moods as a result. “That kind of information is in his file, you know.”

Levi just turns and pushes his face into the pillow, wishing the sheets were cooler. He hasn’t looked at Eren’s file yet, not entirely. He wanted to form his own conclusions.

And lo, conclusion: Eren’s hands are warm, a balm to the almost icy shock of the fresh towel that pools across his forehead. For a gangly boy, Eren’s hands and fingers have always been sure and steady, and the warmth of them suits him. There’s an economy to his movements, the swipe of his fingers as he sweeps Levi’s hair back with the residual moisture of the towel, the businesslike flip of his hand as he rests the back of his hand against Levi’s forehead.

“You’re still burning too hot,” Eren murmurs. Levi wonders where the nurse is, why Eren is here, just blinks at his subordinate with bleary eyes and a harsh frown, too tired to speak and angry because of it, frustrated with his body and its limp unresponsiveness. But the thin broth Eren helps feed him is light and strengthening, and the sheets that Eren pulls over him are newly washed and clean. When Eren decides to take advantage of his health and read him a story or two, his voice slips back into that low grumble, that hypnotic, low slide, and he speaks to Levi as if he were a wolf, another one of his animals to be captivated.

There’s the faint rustle of sheets as a weight lands on one corner of the bed. The steady rhythm of Eren’s voice is interrupted by a hiss of disapproval, and Levi feels spots of pressure moving up his body, accompanied by curious mewls. He soon finds himself nose to nose with a clean, well-groomed cat with a beautiful slate gray coat, its eyes big and blue and curious. It’s a kitten, actually, still small, and it prods at Levi’s nose with a gentle paw, meowing. It wriggles when Eren lifts it away, apologizing. A cat, Levi thinks vaguely. When did he hear about a cat.

“I’m sorry sir,” and Eren still speaks to him like he’s a predator, cradles the small, vulnerable creature in his hands, constantly bringing it back to his lap as it scrambles out time and time again to attack Levi’s limp fingers. “This is the kitten I found the other day, I guess it’s come looking for me.” He looks down at the small bundle of fur with fondness, stroking its ears gently as it reaches out its tiny paws to meow and bat at Levi’s motionless fingers instead. “She was so small, I almost sat on her. I don’t even know how she got down to the basement, but she was curled up in the covers…”

Levi lifts his hand weakly, feels the cat rub her head against his palm in pleasure, and strokes, awkwardly, feels rather than sees the familiar cord tied about its neck. Seeking warmth in cold places is only natural, so people wear coats and scarves and hats in the winter. Protecting the neck is important, because that’s where all the blood is, where all the heat escapes. Necks, the front and the back. Predators always lunge for the throat. Killing titans is not all that different. The cat, Levi thinks hazily, as Eren’s fingers brush his. Big green doe eyes, wolves, heartbeats. Steady hands, steady heart. The cat came back.


End file.
